Conspiratology – The Russians are Coming

I’ve been messing with the Antarctic all day. No results yet but an article was sent to me by email today on Climategate. Despite the fact that ‘there is nothing in the emials’, it appears that they have magically eroded public trust. Don’t worry about the university though, “independent” investigations will confirm that its reputation will remain intact.

Last night, Prof Trevor Davies, pro-vice chancellor at UEA, said he believed the university would emerge with its reputation intact, after launching an independent review into how it handles data and responds to FOI requests.

I’ve got to put this little quote up, I mean how untrue can it be and still make the press.

Prof Davies said: “I hope the people of Norfolk and Norwich accept our commitment to the highest quality research and transparency. And I hope that as we are weathering this storm that the local community will support us.”

If nothing else comes out of the emails, Phil Jones got caught colluding with other government employees to block FOIA. As transparent as ink. The comment which is so interesting is here:

The university believes it has been targeted as part of a co-ordinated campaign by climate change sceptics.

There you go folks, now I’m part of the conspiracy. Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter that we have hundreds of documents pointing out (in no uncertain terms) the globalization agenda of the UN and IPCC. You get a tinfoil hat for even thinking about that. However, receive some unintended emails and blog about it, CONSPIRACY!!

A national newspaper yesterday suggested Russian security services could have been behind the breach, which is being investigated by Nor-folk police aided by Scotland Yard.

So I’m sure we would like to help out the crack detectives of Scotland Yard in any way we can. Actually though, this is just another ruse by the governments involved to misdirect.

Here are several reasons that Scotland yard is obviously wrong:

– Would the Russians would hack an email system across several machines and send it to a single, little-known reporter from a paper with an agenda. This is what happened first?

– Would the Russians then use a password to access RC and put the data on their server with a link saying – then a miracle occurred over on their arch enemy’s blog Climate Audit ?

– Would the Russian government then place the adds on technical skeptic blogs?

– And finally, global warming is an issue which communist governments celebrate. The west gives up financial strength for their development! Why would Russia want to disturb our own economic destruction? The only complaints I’ve seen from communist countries about the ignorance of global warming taxation to save the world, is we aren’t giving enough away, we aren’t limiting our output enough and we aren’t doing it fast enough.

It makes no sense, and make no mistake, it makes no sense for a reason. You can figure it out because, there is a way that these unreasonable people do make sense. Perhaps the great Scotland yard is in cahoots with the government on this?

Anyway, I’ve seen several comments here that perhaps Briffa was the leak. I completely disagree, my opinion is that he was smart enough to play the line in his emails but that’s it. His reconstructions were modified to match the consensus and it was done without complaint from him. Yamal, was exaggerated again without complaint. Numerous papers published his results, hiding the decline without complaint. Where Briffa succeeds is in his ability to make bold paper killing statements right before presenting flawed results. Then he can say peer review agreed and it was disclosed in the peerreviewedliterature (as Real Climate already did). So then the false presentations are all ok.

Consider this my fellow conspiratologists, would Keith Briffa (the man who we learned through Climategate, wouldn’t serve on the NAS panel to hide his advocacy) really stoop to putting the data on Real Climate with a link from Climate Audit.

Nope, he’d leak it to someone another way. He’s too old to play childish games like that. However, there are a group of people who would be young enough and know the issues well enough, and even be angry enough to make this happen.

The grad students.

Sure they have a lot at stake, but consider that they are privy to the office talk. Imagine if you were in climatology school and from the office talk, figured out that the issues were not the same as being presented. Imagine having believed in these people, only to find that not everything is above board. Imagine being intelligent enough to understand that almost every single criticism from CA is right on the money. What would you do? Would you and your buddy get together and let the emails rip.

I can write more but IMO — Scotland yard is not being honest with us. The presentation was childish, it was done by students, my guess is grad students who knew the issues.

charlie98said

Until we know the whole story Briffa should remain a suspect. Seems to me one of the 1700 scientists who recently supported the Met Office seems to have said he did it for fear of not getting work. Who says that Briffa didn’t play the game as well as Snape. Saying it wasn’t Briffa is like Obama saying I don’t know the facts but the police were racist. During the whitewash that is sure to follow some hints will eventually surface as to the truth.

#3, I find it hard to believe that Briffa would play childish games with his own and his coworkers emails. However, pissed off college students might. In a perfect world, it would be a coordinated effort from the engineering department 😀

Kenneth Fritschsaid

The university believes it has been targeted as part of a co-ordinated campaign by climate change sceptics.

Jeff ID, I know we all have some pretty big egos, but when an entity like the one quoted here makes these references they make them as general as possible with the hope that the public will take it as: who would criticize us but some evil cabal.

When Hillary made those references to a vast right wing conspiracy that she claimed was making trouble for her wayward husband, you do not think she had you and me in mind, do you?

What can a wronged woman or a wronged institution say and not lose their money maker and associated claim to fame. He is a no good SOB, but I need him so. That statement somehow, while probably close to what they think, will not cut it with the public. And we are dealing with very public figures here.

Creation Mansaid

Here’s my take on this whole idea of who leaked (leaked, not stole) that archive, and why, and likely how.

Bottom line: it was a leak. And as for the Russians being involved, the only evidence that the Sunday Telegraph had for such a thing was that the original ftp server was located in Tomsk, Siberia. Yes–because tomcity.ru happens to be a Russian ISP, as anyone could easily determine merely by specifying http://tomcity.ru in the “Go” window of his browser. Leave it to a print journalist trying to make a go of things online to make such an elementary oversight.

Kenneth Fritschsaid

A national newspaper yesterday suggested Russian security services could have been behind the breach, which is being investigated by Nor-folk police aided by Scotland Yard.

Reading that carefully I see a national newspaper suggesting the involvement of Russians in the breach – and a breach in general that just so happens is being investigated by Scotland Yard, but not necessarily that the Yard suspects Russians. That might have been the deception that the writer was attempting but that is not what it says.

Kenneth Fritschsaid

As a followup to my post above, I doubt that the police or the Yard would say at this point who they suspect and particularly when it involves a foreign country. Can we get more details on this matter?

Mikesaid

I had to laugh at the line “And finally, global warming is an issue which communist governments celebrate”. In case you didn’t notice, communism ended some time ago in Russia. You know, it was when Reagan won the cold war.

Otherwise, the grad students are pretty good guess. However, even if it was the Russians – so what? More power to them for giving these crooks their due.

boballabsaid

Well the KGB…err the FSB has now waded into the fray and they state that they checked the servers in the Russian city and say that they KNOW the file was uploaded from outside Russia and if everyone doesn’t back off with the russians did it meme they will release the info. It is at the end of this article from the Daily Mail:

“A Russian intelligence source claimed the FSB had new information which could cast light on who was behind the elaborate operation.

‘We are not prepared to release details, but we might if the false claims about the FSB’s involvement do not stop,’ he said. ‘The emails were uploaded to the Tomsk server but we are sure this was done from outside Russia.’ ”

Toddsaid

Carl Gullanssaid

Actually, Russia stands to lose a great deal from climate change negotiations, if they went through successfully. Any country with huge reserves of oil and natural gas (the U.S. included, ironically) will find those reserves’ value substantially reduced if demand is artificially cut by carbon taxes and the like. Not that I think that Russia had anything to do with it… anybody can upload a file to any public FTP site in the world. Whoever did this had a nerdy friend who was able to operate under multiple proxies that couldn’t get traced back to the original source (at least not yet).

#12 Russia might release the details “if the false claims about the FSB’s involvement do not stop.”

I, at least, am not accusing them of anything. If anything the disclosure of the emails should be celebrated. That said, it would be great if the false claims don’t stop — then perhaps the FSB will let us know the real provenance of the files. 🙂